just think a bit of real bright red would hearten it up. If you
don't git red, you needn't git any, Lena Quincy, for I won't use it. Are
you goin' now? Seems to me you got precious little time for your old
mother since you put on all your fine lady airs."

And Lena? Have you ever watched a cecropia moth when it crawls out of
its dull gray prison of chrysalis? It is a moist, frail, tottering
creature with tiny wings folded against its quivering body, but as the
spring sunshine brings to play its magic and infuses its "subtle heats,"
there come shivers of growth. Great waves seem to pulsate from the body
into the wings, and with each wave goes color and strength. In quick
throbs they come at last until they look like a continuous current, and
before your eyes is a glorious bird-like creature, with damask wings
outspread, and flecked with peacock spots, hiding the slender body
within. It feels its strength, spreads and preens itself, and is away to
the forest to meet its fate.

Such was Lena in the first months of her marriage. The world's warmth
welcomed her, partly in curiosity, and partly because she was in truth
Richard Percival's wife, and the protegee of Mrs. Lenox, who took every
pains to shield her and help her. The ways of that little sphere that
calls itself society she found it not difficult to acquire, when to
beauty she added the paraphernalia of luxury. A little trick of holding
oneself, a turn of speech, a familiarity with a certain set of people
and their doings, and the thing is accomplished. Was there ever yet an
American girl, whose supreme characteristic is adaptability, who could
not learn it in a few months, if she set her mind to it?

As she experienced the true pleasure of being inside, which is the
knowledge that there are outsiders raging to make entrance, she spread
her wings, did Madame Cecropia, and the only wonder was that she was
ever packed away in the dull gray chrysalis. And now every one forgot
that ugly thing, when Lena changed her sky but not her heart.

Dick and she lived in a whirl; and if he would have liked, after
strenuous days spent in spreading political feelers, to have found at
home quiet evenings and old slippers, he was rapidly learning that the
position of husband to a young beauty is no sinecure. And he admired and
loved her too much to fling even a rose leaf of opposition in her path.
The very hardship of her past made him tender to every whim of the
present. Dick's chi